How likely is it for a 15 year old to have lung cancer?

Question

This girl I know, who I'm sort of friends with - I say "sort of" because she seems to lie for attention quite a bit- says she has lung cancer. She's only 15 though...she says she smokes, although I don't doubt that too much because her voice is quite raspy.

I met her at a conference and on the last night she told a bunch of us (we were in groups) and everyone felt so bad. But I couldn't help thinking how convenient that she found out today, the last night (meaning she'll never see us again, probably). Plus she seemed pretty calm and she didn't show any sign of being upset or sad (ironic that we were crying and she wasn't). I'm really not trying to make it seem as if she is lying, because for all I know, she really does have lung cancer. But I also heard that when someone gets news of having a disease, they're usually not about to tell EVERYONE, they prefer to hide it from people, but the girl just ended up telling everyone everything. To me it seemed possible she was just having one more chance at getting attention, but I'm not sure.

Do you guys think she's telling the truth?

Answer 1

It is possible for children and adolescents to have a primary or a secondary pulmonary cancer . . . it is not an adult type of lung cancer though. Most cancers in the lungs of young people are from metastatic spread or from a sarcoma, lymphoma, or thyroid carcinoma. It is fairly common for any advanced childhood cancer to metastasize to the lungs.  My teenage son had mets to his lungs but his primary cancer was in the abdomen.

So . . it is not so easy to dismiss her claim. It would be very rare for her to have had an adult type of lung cancer associated with smoking . . but there are primary cancers that occur during adolescents and young adults called sarcoma . . they not only appear as a primary cancer in the lung, but can also metastasize to the lung.

Perhaps she had a mets to her lung?

Usually though if a patient still has active cancer, than they are still in treatment and you would have seen evidence of medications or even hair loss from chemotherapy. Still . . without knowing more it is difficult to say one way or the other if she had cancer or not.

National Cancer Institute: Unusual Thoracic Cancers of Childhood

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/t...

Teens living with cancer: Osteosarcoma - mets to lungs common

http://www.teenslivingwithcancer.org/can...

Answer 2

No.

While she might have some other type of cancer (a lymphoma or Hodgkin's) that happened to be located in her lungs, the chances that a 15 year old would have primary lung cancer of the types commonly found in older smokers is next to impossible.

Answer 3

It is very very VERY VERY!!! Unlikely for a teenager to have lung cancer, but then again it isn't impossible. There are rare cases everywhere, things just happen sometimes.  

Answer 4

It is unlikely that she has lung cancer. Unless she were genetically predestined to get it, smoking is unlikely to produce cancer in a 15 year old unless she has been smoking very heavily since before she was 5.

Answer 5

It's an impossibility.